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El-Rufai
Photo: Sun News Publishing
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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC) has begun moves to extradite former
minister of the Federal Capital Territory,
Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, from London to face
sundry charges bordering on abuse of office and
corruption, especially the alleged
misappropriation of over $32 billion being
proceeds from the sales of Federal Government
houses in Abuja.
EFCC Chairman, Mrs Farida Waziri, said on
Wednesday in Abuja , that the commission had
already filed corruption charges against El-Rufai
in a court of competent jurisdiction in Nigeria
and the process for his extradition would
commence soon. She said the commission was not
losing sleep over el-Rufai, and was determined
to pursue his case to its logical conclusion.
Contrary to the claim by Attorney General of the
Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Micheal
Aondoakaa, that $150 million out of the $180
million allegedly involved in the Halliburton
bribe scandal had been traced to a Swiss bank
account, Waziri, who spoke at a media briefing
to mark the commission’s sixth anniversary,
denied knowledge of the development, just as she
dismissed allegations that the money recovered
by the EFCC from ex-Inspector General of police,
Tafa Balogun, was missing.
Waziri explained that the commission filed
corruption charges against el-Rufai after it had
established a prima facie case against the
former minister, for which he would be
extradited to face prosecution despite his
resort to blackmailing the Presidency, the
National Assembly, and accusing the EFCC of
shielding some ex-governors close to President
Umaru Yar’Adua
“He has been attacking the National Assembly,
the Presidency, as well as the EFCC. But if you
notice, he has not answered anything about the
National Assembly’s allegation that he
demolished peoples’ houses and re-allocated the
lands in corrupt manner. Whatever he says, we
are not losing sleep over el-Rufai. We’ve filed
a case in court and you can only do that when
you’ve established a case against a person. We
will let you know when the process of
extradition commences in the court. Again, we
are not shielding ex-governors from prosecution
as he is alleging. El-Rufai shouldn’t be afraid
to come out and defend himself. This is not the
era where you are handcuffed and dragged on the
floor, it is an era of the rule of law,” Waziri
remarked.
Commenting on the $150million out of the
$180million involved in the Halliburton scandal
which the AGF, Micheal Aondaoakaa, claimed last
week, had been traced to a Swiss bank account,
the EFCC boss said: “I don’t know anything about
that and there is no correspondence to me to
that effect. I was out of the country when this
issue came up, and I only read it in the
newspapers as well. I am not in a position to
answer that question. The AGF is in a position
to do so.”
While denying knowledge that two key police
investigators in the Halliburton case had
recently been redeployed from the anti-graft
Commission by the police authorities, she
however, gave assurance that investigation into
the case was in progress, and the EFCC as well
as the Federal Government was favourably
disposed to providing the necessary logistics
and secured atmosphere for any witness willing
to give evidence on the Halliburton scandal,
which she described as a sensitive case of
international dimension.
She further debunked speculations that the EFCC
had submitted on interim report on the
Halliburton case to President Yar’Adua. Her
words: “I have not submitted any interim report
to Mr. President. It is a case I inherited, and
I am still working on it. But very soon, I will
submit my interim report on it to Mr.
President.”
Waziri, who also said investigation on the
Siemens case was still ongoing, accused the
Vaswani brothers of being inconsistent in their
handling of the rice import duties evasion case
pending before the EFCC, saying: “This
$2.5billion that we asked them to pay, after we
had arrested some of the staff, they had agreed
to pay, but all of a sudden, they changed their
mind and took us to court. We’ve gone very far
about the Vaswani brothers; we’ve concluded one
leg of the investigation. They only paid for
three ships, but a total of six ships came into
the country.”
Reacting on her summons by the House of
Representatives to appear before it alongside
the Inspector General of police, Mike Okiro,
over the alleged disappearance of the money
recovered by the EFCC from ex-IGP, Tafa Balogun,
Waziri asserted that the money was not missing.
“This is one of the cases I inherited, but I
know that monies recovered are either paid into
the consolidated account or the Accountant
General. If it is Federal Government money, it
is paid into the Central Bank, but others go to
the AG’s account.
Now, I am aware that Balogun had appealed to the
President to look into his seized assets. There
was this police funds for personnel insurance
which were also seized from Tafa Balogun. The
IGP wrote to the President requesting release of
the insurance money for families of deceased
officers and the Presidency gave approval,” she
explained.
Noting that her greatest challenge was how to
secure autonomy for the EFCC, Waziri said she
neither needed the consent and approval of the
Presidency nor the office of the Attorney
General of the Federation to prosecute any case
which the Commission had concluded
investigations and established a case against
the suspect, just as she spoke of a robust
working relationship between her commission and
the Independent Corrupt Practices and other
Related Offences Commission (ICPC), as well as
the Nigeria Police Force.
Reeling out her scorecard since assumption of
office nine months ago, Waziri stated that the
EFCC under her leadership had recovered over
$50billion and as well secured 50 convictions
representing one-third of total convictions
secured since the establishment of the
commission in 2002.
She further disclosed that the commission had
targeted a recovery of $120billion for the
Federal Government in the next twelve months
through Project Eagle-Eye, a special training
initiative for officers of the commission, which
would lead to tax investigations, amongst other
issues.
Reiterating that the anti-corruption war had not
lost its steam, Waziri said special challenges
from the judiciary had arisen from frivolous and
vexatious injunctions restraining the commission
from exercising its statutory functions,
compelling it to file complaints with the office
of the Chief Justice of the Federation and the
National Judicial Council in recent times.
The EFCC boss lamented that the bulk of looted
funds were routed through the banking sector,
but gave assurance that the banks would be
sanitized as a first step towards any realistic
fight against economic crimes. “They must file
transaction reports as and when due; once the
banks are no longer a platform for economic
crimes, apprehending looters will be easier,”
she posited.
She added that “a day hardly passes without the
investigation of a high profile case, and there
are presently over 200 pending cases in various
courts across the country at various stages of
prosecution raging from corruption, money
laundering, fraud, illegal oil bunkering, and
pipeline vandalism, among others.”
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